Martin's Blog – Page 3 – Research on Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing

Telefonica Research at CHI ’14

January 16, 2014

Telefonica Research will be represented with 2 full papers and 2 ToCHI articles at ACM CHI ’14, the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. Didn’t You See My Message? Martin Pielot, Rodrigo de Oliveira, Haewoon Kwak, Nuria Oliver We found that monitoring the phone (screen activity, notification center access, proximity sensor, ringer mode) allows to […]

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Ambient Timer – Unobtrusively Reminding Users of Upcoming Tasks with Ambient Light

September 3, 2013

Alice is working on a report for the head of her department. At the same time, there is a meeting scheduled in thirty minutes, which she has to attend. The Ambient Timer is already illuminating the wall behind her monitor in a low-attention state, so Alice feels confident that she will be reminded of the […]

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iPad 4 or iPad Mini?

August 25, 2013

Planning to buy an iPad? If you are thinking to join the Apple world of tablet computers, you probably have already thought about whether it should be a Mini or a ‘regular’ iPad. In this article, I give some potentially helpful information for your choice: I present my personal experience owing both devices. My Experiences […]

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Use 18pt Font Size for Readers with Dyslexia

June 22, 2013

Dyslexia: a common reading disability Dyslexia is a neurological reading disability, which impairs a person’s ability to read and write. In the media, we often hear about dyslexia as a gift in the context of famous people, such as Steve Jobs. However, in reality, depending on the language, a significant chunk of the people suffer […]

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NordiCHI 2012

October 21, 2012

NordiCHI is the bi-annual Nordic Conference Human-Computer Interaction. Though a country from Scandinavia traditionally hosts it, the conference attracts designers and researchers from all over the world. This year, 2012, it took place at the ITU University of Copenhagen, Denmark. My colleague Heiko and I found this year’s NordiCHI to be an excellent forum for exchanging ideas […]

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Open CSV files by double click with Excel 2011 (OS X)

October 26, 2013

Excel can open and interpret CSV files on double click. However, for some locales it may happen that all the content appears in the first row. This is how I fixed it. Clean up Preferred Languages In my case, I am using Excel 2011 for OS X 10.9. The CSV was not interpreted correctly, because […]

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Peripheral Vibro-Tactile Displays

August 28, 2013

If you are sitting, which parts of your body are currently touching the chair? Are you leaning on a backrest or an armrest? Think about it! Now, you are aware! But have you been just before reading this post? Probably not! This is the beauty of peripheral perception, i.e. perceiving sensory input in the periphery […]

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I Never get the Good One’s! How many Paper to Review?

July 14, 2013

“I never get the good papers for review.“ If this thought has ever crossed your mind, you are probably not alone. Good conferences in the HCI field typically accept only 20-25% of the papers submitted for review. So how many papers to accept for review … to review at least one good one? It may […]

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How the Phone’s Vibration Alarm can help to Save Battery

December 11, 2012

“Not sure how long my hero’s battery will last with GPS on and my phone vibrating every second to indicate if on right track!?!” – This and similar concerns have frequently been expressed when I presented the PocketNavigator – a navigation system guiding pedestrians by vibration patterns instead of spoken turning instructions. To quantify how […]

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App Store Studies : How to Ask for Consent?

October 18, 2012

App Stores, such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play, provide researchers the opportunity to conduct experiments with a large number of participants. If we collect data during these experiments, it may be necessary to ask for the users’ consent beforehand. The way we ask for the users’ consent can be crucial, because nowadays people […]

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